Paradise

Tony Hsieh (pronounced “Shay”) wanted to promote happiness and world peace. The brilliant business guru took over Zappos soon after it was founded. Under his leadership, he propelled it from a company on the verge of collapse to a successful online retail enterprise that sold to Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009.

After the publication of his book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, he became a workplace-happiness guru. Thousands of business leaders, government officials, and Wall Street analysts flocked to Zappos’s downtown Las Vegas headquarters each year to take tours of its fun-filled offices and learn from Mr. Hsieh.

When Hsieh stepped down as CEO of Zappos in August of 2020, he thought he could achieve world peace. He moved to Park City, Utah, and wanted to attract intellectuals and artists with outsize salaries to create a sort of utopia. The blueprint for this model town could then be applied to other cities across the world.

But behind his swift success, Mr. Hsieh had for years struggled privately with social anxiety, autism, and alcohol abuse. Five months before his death, he suffered a breakdown after abusing drugs, in particular a drug that some describe as “spiritual.” He had also developed a fascination with fire. He liked fooling around with it and performing magic tricks. Candles were sometimes perched dangerously on his bedspread, and Mr. Hsieh kept a small fire ring in his bedroom that shot flames into the air without any barrier. Sadly, he died at 46 in November 2020, from injuries sustained in a house fire that was ruled an accident by local authorities.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This tragic tale shows what happens when we work for “happiness” or “world peace” or making a difference in the world without first dealing with our own sin and brokenness.

Consider this comment a girl posted on an atheist website:

I'm confused ... I always believed science would be the cure-all for my problems, but I don’t know if I can keep living without eternal life. I guess I'll just have to find a way myself to make it through this meaningless existence. I just wish I knew of someone who could show me the path to eternal life. If science can't provide the answers, though, then who or what can!? *sigh* Doesn't it seem like there is a higher power that gives our lives purpose? Well, science says there isn't, so there isn't.

Have you ever felt like this girl? Can you relate to her angst? Have you ever really wondered, in an atheistic universe, if there is any point at all? Even Bertrand Russell, the great and influential philosopher, realized that an atheistic universe is truly meaningless.

Hope is in short supply in our culture these days. If life as one sees it now on this pain-filled planet is all there is, then existence is indeed meaningless and one must, as this girl says, "find a way myself." She realizes there is one thing that would make everything meaningful: eternal life. She once expected science to find a way for humans to live forever, but she has come to realize that it cannot.

At one point in history, there was a band of people who trusted in someone they fervently believed would truly change the world for good. A handful of devout Jewish people thought a man named Jesus was the Messiah—the deliverer who would break their oppressive bondage under the Romans and set up a permanent and truly godly kingdom on earth. Their prophet Isaiah had prophesied in the ancient Jewish writings that the Messiah would come and restore all things to a paradise, where there would be no more fighting, oppression, fear, or death (Isa. 11; Isa. 35). Everyone would live together in peace forever.

In their book, The God Conversation, Moreland and Muehlhoff illustrate the universal desire for a story to have a happy ending:

"And they lived happily ever after" is a constant refrain in fairy tales, movies, and love songs. Our well-meaning friends tell us, "It's going to be all right!" And we have proverbs that assure that behind every cloud is a silver lining. This desire for a happy ending seems deeply embedded within us.

This desire is so strong that some artists and directors are forced to compromise in order to provide us with the ending we want. In the 2013 film August: Osage County, actress Meryl Streep plays the harsh matriarch of a dysfunctional family. The film unrelentingly shows the family ripping itself apart. Scene after scene is void of warmth, humor, or hope. The film fittingly ends with Streep weeping in the arms of the housekeeper as each of her daughters abandons her.

As the credits roll, audiences are presented with the scene of the eldest daughter, Julia Roberts, standing in a field, smiling as she watches horses playfully run together as the sun goes down, casting everything in golden hues. In the background, a pop group sings an upbeat song: "Things are always better when we're all together."

How was such an ending added to the troubling film? John Wells, who adapted the play, sheepishly admitted he was pressured into it. When the movie had been shown to test audiences, they had rebelled and demanded that producers provide a more hopeful ending. Thus, the movie ends with a classic Julia Roberts smile and a pop anthem playing during a glorious Sunset. Audiences got their happy ending, however forced.

This world and its history are prelude and foretaste; all the sunrises and sunsets, symphonies and rock concerts, feasts and friendships are but whispers. They are a prologue to the grander story and an even better place. Only there, it will never end. J. I. Packer said it so well: "Hearts on earth say in the course of a joyful experience, 'I don't want this ever to end.' But it invariably does. The hearts in heaven say, 'I want this to go on forever.' And it will. There can be no better news than this."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Afterlife; Heaven; Hope; (2) Easter; Resurrection—In light of Christ's triumph over death, those who trust him experience the incredible good news in this quote.

Author Peter Kreeft asks us to imagine the day when sin, death, and evil are finally defeated by Christ:

Suppose God took you on a crystal ball trip into your future and you saw with indubitable certainty that despite everything—your sin, your smallness, your stupidity—you could have free for the asking your whole crazy heart's deepest desire: heaven, eternal joy. Would you not return fearless and singing? What can earth do to you, if you are guaranteed heaven? To fear the worst earthly loss would be like a millionaire fearing the loss of a penny—less, a scratch on a penny.

In April 2012 Time magazine ran a cover story titled "Heaven Can't Wait: Why rethinking the hereafter could make the world a better place." In the next issue, Time printed a letter to the editor from Marc Herbert from Walnut Creek, California, who wrote:

Your story [about heaven] says that 85 percent of Americans believe in heaven. That's incredible. They think of heaven as quiet and peaceful, with no need to do anything. [That] sounds pretty dull to me. What do you do with all of that free time? And it goes on forever and ever!

Possible Preaching Angle: Sadly, these comments reflect the views of many people in our culture (and even in our churches) regarding our eternal destiny. This would be an excellent way to introduce a sermon on the real beauty and glory of living with Christ forever.

Ever since he was a kid, Bob Goff had a dream to sail across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii. So Bob and four of his buddies entered the Transpac Race, a semi-annual sailboat race from Los Angeles to Hawaii. With limited sailing skills, Bob and his friends loaded their thirty-five foot sailboat with canned chili and bottled water and set sail for Hawaii. But for Bob and his friends, the most moving part of the journey was the arrival at the finishing line. Bob writes:

There's a tradition in the Transpac Race no matter when you finish the race, even if it's two in the morning. When you pull into the Ala Moana Marina in Oahu, there's a guy who announces the name of the boat and every crew member who made the trip …. It's the same guy, and he's been announcing each boat's arrival at the end of every Transpac Race for decades.

Just when we came to the end of our supplies, we sailed across the finish line just off Diamond Head and into the marina. It was a few hours before dawn. It had been sixteen days since we set out from Los Angeles in our little boat knowing very little about navigation. Suddenly, the silence was broken by a booming voice over a loudspeaker announcing the name of our tiny boat …. Then he started announcing the names of our ragtag crew like he was introducing heads of state. One by one he announced all of our names with obvious pride in his voice, and it became a really emotional moment for each of us onboard.

When he came to my name, he didn't talk about how few navigation skills I had or the zigzag course I'd led us in to get there. He didn't tell everyone I didn't even know which way north was or about all my other mess-ups. Instead, he just welcomed me in from the adventure like a proud father would. When he was done, there was a pause and then in a sincere voice his last words to the entire crew were these: "Friends, it's been a long trip. Welcome home." Because of the way he said it, we all welled up and fought back tears. I wiped my eyes as I reflected in that moment about all the uncertainty that had come with the journey, all the sloppy sailing and how little I knew. But none of that mattered now because we had completed the race.

I've always thought that heaven might be kind of a similar experience …. After we each cross the finish line in our lives, I imagine it will be like floating into the Hawaiian marina when our names were announced, one by one. At the end of our lives, after our many mistakes and midcourse corrections, our loving Heavenly Father will simply say, "Friends, it's been a long trip. Welcome home."

Paul David Tripp states that the Bible says that the impermanence of life on earth is like dwelling in tents. Tripp writes:

Most of us have no pilgrim experience, so perhaps the closest thing in our experience to the journey of a pilgrim is rustic camping. I am persuaded that the whole purpose of camping is to make a person long for home! On that first day in the woods, putting up the tent is exciting, but three days later your tent has unpleasant odors you can't explain. You love the taste of food cooked over an open flame (that's ash!), but three days later you are tired of foraging for wood and irritated by how fast it burns. You were excited at the prospect of catching your dinner from the stream running past your campsite, which is reported to be teeming with trout, but all you have snagged are the roots on the bottom.

You're now four days in and your back hurts, there seems to be no more felled wood to forage, and you're tired of keeping the fire going anyway.

You look into what was once an ice-and-food-filled cooler to see the family-sized steaks you have reserved floating gray and oozing in a pool of blood-stained water. Suddenly you begin to think fondly of home …. You stand there hoping that someone will break the silence and say, "Why don't we go home?" Your four days in the wilderness have accomplished their mission. They have prepared you to appreciate home!

Tripp adds: "Our world isn't a very good amusement park. No, it's a broken place groaning for redemption. Here is meant to make us long for forever. Here is meant to prepare us for eternity."

Author Frederica Mathewes-Green addresses people who hunger for God's presence but rarely feel it—at least not in dramatic ways. She writes:

My hunch is that you are already sensing something of God's presence, or you wouldn't care. Picture yourself walking around a shopping mall, looking at people and the window displays. Suddenly, you get a whiff of cinnamon. You weren't even hungry, but now you really crave a cinnamon roll. This craving isn't something you made up. There you were, minding your own business, when some drifting molecules of sugar, butter, and spice collided with a susceptible patch inside your nose. You had a real encounter with cinnamon—not a mental delusion, not an emotional projection, but the real thing.

And what was the effect? You want more, now. And if you hunger to know the presence of God, it's because … you have already begun to scent [God's] compelling delight.

We have a faith that does not shrink from death. The fundamental concern of our faith is both to reveal with fearsome accuracy the nature of death, and to draw the sting from it by the victory of the resurrected Christ. We, of all people, need to deny nothing true, the bad and the good. Of all people, we are most able to confess the grand proportions of death: so terrible as to defeat us all!—but defeated, rather, in Jesus.

—Author Walter Wangerin, Jr.

Every once in a while, you hear a stunning story about loved ones who are notified of a death in the family that hasn't actually happened. In this case, Alfred and Geri Esposite of Mastic Beach, New York, had been told that their son, Freddy, had been killed in a collision with a tractor-trailer on a Pennsylvania highway. It was an understandable mistake on the authorities' part. For some reason the man who died was carrying Freddy's driver's license.

Freddy was supposed to be staying with his brother Chris, so when Chris got word of his brother's death, he raced home. Geri, the mother, relates what happened next: "He goes downstairs into his brother's apartment, and he saw something on the couch. Chris poked at the lump under the blankets, and his brother awoke. Chris screamed, 'You're dead! You're dead!' And Freddy counters, 'I'm sleeping!'"

That's the story of our lives as Christians. Thanks to the resurrection of Jesus, we don't die. We sleep. The Bible speaks only of Christians who sleep, and even in our sleep we are alive in Christ, consciously awaiting the day Jesus returns to claim his bride, the church.

When it comes to movies, James Cameron is known for making a splash. After all, he wrote and directed Titanic in 1997, which pulled in over $1.8 billion at the box office to become the highest grossing movie of all time. So it was no surprise when Cameron's most ambitious project, Avatar, garnered instant box office success.

The story takes place in a far away planet called Pandora, which is inhabited by a race of 7-feet-tall, peace-loving natives known as the Na'vi. Human beings from Earth have occupied parts of the planet in search of a rare and valuable mineral, which leads to skirmishes with the Na'vi, and ultimately to war. Caught up in the middle of these machinations are Jake Sully (a marine who "drives" an artificially created alien body) and Neytiri (a Na'vi princess). Those two characters fall in love and ultimately join forces to save Pandora. The movie was released in December of 2009, and in less than a month it raked in more than $1.3 billion worldwide—second only to Titanic in total revenue.

What is surprising, however, is the way that Cameron's fictional world impacted the perception of our own world for many of the film's viewers. Within a week of Avatar's debut, websites dedicated to the movie were filled with comments from people lamenting the fact that Avatar's people and places could not be reached in any real way. In fact, an entire thread on a popular forum website was called "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible."

"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed gray," wrote one fan. "It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning."

Another wrote something similar: "The day after I saw Avatar, I was completely depressed. I looked at my hands and thought, What I wouldn't give …. Going and seeing [it] again and again makes me feel good. I love Pandora, not just a spur of the moment feeling; I legitimately love all of Pandora and 'waking up' afterwards is extremely hard to do."

These comments are just a sample among thousands of posts that appeared on dozens of fansites. Most expressed a longing to somehow transport themselves into the world of Pandora, and most expressed an accompanying sense of depression because of the impossibility of such a transfer. For others, the movie seemed to intensify a deep dissatisfaction with their everyday lives—and a desire for a fresh chance someplace new.

Responding to several fans' plan to establish a Na'vi way of living on Earth, a forum moderator named Elequin said the following: "Thats the problem, even if you wanted to strive to be more like the Na'vi, you would be eaten alive in this world. It really hurts thinking that, you know? It really would take a complete, new fresh start somewhere un-corrupted."

"I know!" wrote another fan in response to Elequin. "But there's no chance of moving somewhere else—to a 'fresh place.' Shall we just live with the fact that we can't begin [again]? Do we really have to deal with that?"

Thank God that the answer is no. We don't have to deal with that, we all have the opportunity for a fresh start, and we can find a home that is un-corrupted. Not on Pandora, of course, but through the Kingdom of God.

God destines us for an end beyond the grasp of reason.

—St. Thomas Aquinas, Italian Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, and theologian (c. 1225-1274)

God destines us for an end beyond the grasp of reason.

What is the most beautiful thing you have experienced this week?

Maybe something you heard. Maybe some beautiful music—perhaps in church, or in the cathedral. Maybe something in the world of nature: the sun breaking through the mist and making the autumn leaves luminous, the curl of a squirrel's tail as he sat nibbling a nut. It might be something you smelt: the scent of a rose perhaps, or the smell of a good meal cooking when you were very hungry. It might be something you taste: an exquisite wine, a special cheese, that same meal well seasoned and well cooked.

Maybe something you experienced in work: things suddenly coming together, an unexpected new opportunity. It might be something you experienced in human relationships: a quiet, gentle glance from someone you love dearly; the soft squeeze of a child's hand. …

I want to suggest to you…that our ordinary experiences of beauty are given to us to provide a clue, a starting-point, a signpost, from which we move on to recognize, to glimpse, to be overwhelmed by, to adore, and so to worship, not just the majesty, but the beauty of God himself.

Tony Campolo writes:

I went to my first black funeral when I was 16 years old. A friend of mine, Clarence, had died. The pastor was incredible. From the pulpit he talked about the Resurrection in beautiful terms. He had us thrilled. He came down from the pulpit, went to the family, and comforted them from the fourteenth chapter of John. "Let not your heart be troubled," he said, "'You believe in God, believe also in me,' said Jesus. Clarence has gone to heavenly mansions."

Then, for the last 20 minutes of the sermon, he actually preached to the open casket. Now, that's drama! He yelled at the corpse: "Clarence! Clarence!" He said it with such authority. I would not have been surprised had there been an answer. He said, "Clarence, there were a lot of things we should have said to you that we never said to you. You got away too fast, Clarence. You got away too fast." He went down this litany of beautiful things that Clarence had done for people. When he finished—here's the dramatic part—he said, "That's it, Clarence. There's nothing more to say. When there's nothing more to say, there's only one thing to say. Good night. Good night, Clarence!" He grabbed the lid of the casket and slammed it shut. "Good night, Clarence!" Boom!

Shock waves went over the congregation. As the preacher then lifted his head, you could see there was this smile on his face. He said, "Good night, Clarence. Good night, Clarence, because I know, I know that God is going to give you a good morning!" The choir stood and starting singing, "On that great morning, we shall rise, we shall rise." We were dancing in the aisles and hugging each other. I knew the joy of the Lord, a joy that in the face of death laughs and sings and dances, for there is no sting to death.